


Lullaby

by CaptainAmelia22



Series: In the Shadows [1]
Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Cryogenics, F/M, Mindwiping, PTSD, Retcon, Spies & Secret Agents, Super Soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-26 17:05:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainAmelia22/pseuds/CaptainAmelia22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is the ghost of a shadowy agency, the forgotten sister of those called the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier.  Her commanders pull her out of storage when they need something impossible done, not because she is the best, but because she is unbelievably broken.  There is the secret hope, when they send the Kestrel on a mission, that she will not return alive.  It is with this hope that one night she is sent to New York City to try and jeopardize one of the Avengers missions; when she inadvertently stumbles upon a ghost from her erased past, her 22 years worth of programming falls into disarray.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End

_**Tavnik, Bosnia** _  
_**May 1989** _

_The bombs are getting closer_.   _Move your ass, Agent._

The vibrations of their impact rocked through the soles of the agent's boots. The low _ka-rump_ of their exploding was enough to make the fillings in his teeth tremble.

“Code red, code red, medical assistance requested,” he gasped into his comm as he wove between the shells of burnt out cars and fallen buildings towards the heart of this hell of a town. Ahead, right beside the town square, was the bank he and his partner had holed up in when this mission went to hell. _Good, Commie’s haven’t found us yet. Thank God_ , he thought as he eased around an overturned phone booth and continued on his way.

His eyes closed in agony as his body lurched into the side of a very much defunct pharmacy and he tried to ignore how close _that_ bomb blast had been.

There was no time to focus on the Soviet’s slow encroachment on this bit of territory, though.

“Code red! Our handlers are dead and my partner and I have been compromised, requesting backup and medical assistance!” he choked as heavy smoke began to wash down on him; the bombs were getting closer, he could hear he tanks behind him, slowly creeping up on his position.

Blessedly, just as he was on the verge of abandoning all hope, his comm crackled to life and a voice snapped, “Hawkeye, there is a team enroute to your position. Expect aid in twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes.

“Not enough time commander,” he snapped, “Tatiana is not going to make it-“

“Don’t use names Agent!” snapped his commander and he should have flinched or apologized but they were fucked and _twenty minutes was not enough time_.

“Get us out of here,” he growled as he vaulted over the nose of a shell riddled Mercedes, barely missing a spray of shrapnel from a bomb exploding ten yards from his position. “If she dies because of you morons it’s all on you Hill.”

His muscles were burning, the strain of the past day finally catching up with him and he could swear his bow weighed close to a ton now. He could feel the bullet he’d taken while trying to find some bandages for his partner grinding against his shoulder blade and the pain was enough for him to black out.

 _Don’t lose it now Barton_ , he growled to himself. _You have to get back to base_. _Get back to Tatiana_.

_Get back to your girl..._

_Can’t fail her now! You swore you’d get her out of this._

_You swore..._

He almost missed the faint pop of a sniper’s rifle going off, but he ducked in time to miss the bullet before it slammed into the wall of the pharmacy with enough force to buckle the brick.

“Hill, you have to do better than twenty minutes,” he groaned as he pivoted on one foot and shot an arrow in the direction of the sniper he knew still had him in his sights. The bastard was holed up in the steeple of a church. But he got the Commie. _No worries_ , he thought with a feral grin, _I’m still the best sniper in the West_. To his commander he snarled, “We’re getting our asses handed to us.”

“I understand Hawkeye, we are doing our best.”

He snorted at the woman’s coldly indifferent voice and kept an eye on his sniper through his scope.

The Commie’s body made a satisfying crunch as he tumbled from five stories up to collapse bonelessly into the broken roads of Tavnik.

His lips twitched into a feral smile and he searched the roofs around him for any other snipers before sidling up to their hideout after he determined the coast was clear. “She took a bullet for me and if I don’t get her out of this shithole it’s going to be because you lot-“

“Shut up Hawkeye,” growled a man’s deep voice and he flinched now, at the sound of Director Nick Fury’s irritation. “The jet was sent ten minutes ago the moment Agent Briggs’ comm code cut. You’ll get a rescue in ten minutes. Keep Agent Rashi alive and this won’t be a waste.”

“A waste,” he growled as he threw himself onto the fire escape and began to pull himself up the bank’s side with nimble ease, his bow snug against his shoulders. “This has been a bogus mission from the get-go and she knew it. Tatiana told us there was no way we could break the Soviet's hold on Bosnia but you wouldn't listen Director.  You're still not lisening.  Why’d you send her back to this place anyway? You swore she’d never have to come back to the East.”

Fury was quiet and the agent flinched. He knew why they’d been sent; he just wanted Fury to say it out loud so he didn’t feel like a failure.

“She asked for this assignment,” Fury sighed after a moment. The agent could almost hear the sadness in the other man’s voice, which scared him shitless. “She wanted to come back to Bosnia. She wanted to see this mission through, Hawkeye. And you’re her partner- we knew that if anyone could get her out of there alive it’d be you.”

“Yeah?” he asked as he eased into the broken third story window, his chest heaving and his arms shaking as blood streamed in earnest from the wound in his shoulder to clot in his under armor and the waistband of his boxers. “Well, I don’t think I’m going to be able to complete my mission sir.”

A sigh and then, “Just do your best Clint. We’ll get you out as soon as possible. Keep Agent Rashi alive. Fury out.”

The agent’s cold gaze was locked on the huddled figure sitting against the far wall of the upper story offices of their bank.  His partner.  

She’d moved while he was out looking for supplies and scoping the Soviet’s positions; he could see the trail of blood leading from the pallet she’d been sleeping on near the fireplace to the wall under the window.

Her hands were wrapped around a pistol and for a moment he thought she was wearing gloves, but as he approached her on shaking legs, he realized with a jolt her fingers were dark with blood.

Too much blood.

“Tatiana,” he groaned as he sagged to his knees before her still figure. Her eyes fluttered open at his voice and she smiled.

“About time you showed up,” she whispered, blood dribbling from her lips as her head lolled back against the wall so she could better track his movements. “Thought you’d made a run for it.”

He laughed brokenly as he settled beside her and pulled her against his side. “You know I’d never leave you Tia,” he whispered against her tangled hair. He could still see the gem encrusted combs she’d used to pin back her blonde curls nestled there. “I know you’d hunt me down and beat the shit out of me if I did.”

She laughed at that, the sound ratcheting through their darkening hidey-hole and he winced as she convulsed in his arms. He could feel the warm pulse of blood against his fingers and he knew ten minutes was going to be far too long for his partner.

“Easy baby,” he whispered, tears starting to well in his eyes as she shivered; he eased his arms out of his heavy SHIELD issued coat and wrapped it around her, trying desperately to ignore the blood oozing from the wound in her lower belly. “Easy my love.”

“Don’t leave me yet Clint,” she whispered when he gathered her tightly in his arms and pulled her into his lap. “Please don’t leave me for the Commies, not until I'm dead.”

Her head was resting against his shoulder, her dark brown eyes locked on his ice-blue eyes and he shivered at the blankness in her gaze.

She was going into shock.

He eased the gun from her cold fingers, almost smiling as she bared her teeth in a snarl, but she surrendered her favorite weapon without protesting and that scared him more than the blood coating his fingers now.

Tatiana Rashi never let anyone touch her weapons.

Never.

He studied her carefully as he cradled her slender body against his chest and what he saw scared him beyond belief.

His partner, his best friend…his lover…was nearly gone.

She was leaving him.

“Ah baby,” he whispered against her hair. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t…just…don’t.”

She was so pale she was almost gray; there was no color in her lips and there were dark shadows under her eyes.

She’d lost so much blood.

The Soviet General’s bullets had done their work.

She was still wearing the remnants of her green gown, the gown SHIELD had provided for this mission. It pooled in his lap and even like this, as broken as her once strong body was, she was beautiful.

He’d shed his ridiculous tuxedo hours ago when they’d realized their cover had been blown but she still wore the ridiculous slip of satin. She’d lost so much blood, even a few hours ago; he hadn’t wanted to push her too far by easing her into her SHIELD uniform.

 _Maybe I should have tried_ , he thought desperately. _The Kevlar might have kept some of the blood loss in check._

But it was too late for second guessing now.

Far, far too late.

“Ah Tia, I’m sorry,” he groaned as he stroked the back of his fingers across her cheek. “I failed you baby. I failed you and I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” she whispered brokenly as her eyes fluttered open. “Shh, Clint, don’t do that. Don’t…I don’t want to see you cry. It’ll be too sad.”

He choked out a little laugh at her words, the hysteria he was now feeling coloring his tone. In the distance they could hear the tanks and some part of him knew, knew their rescue wasn’t going to make it. They’d never land with those anti-aircraft weapons heading their way.

 _Oh well_ , he thought to himself as he pressed a kiss to her temple. _Couldn’t expect SHIELD to risk one of their precious Quinjets for a couple of fucked over Agents._ He sighed and ran his hands briskly over her shoulders. _Just hold her one more time. This won’t be the worst way to go, now will it?_

“We had one hell of a party didn’t we Tia?” he whispered against her icy cheek and she laughed, her hand rising to stroke his cheek.

“I blew up an embassy Clinton,” she whispered, her eyes locked on his, her lips lifted in a bloody smile. “If that doesn’t count as a party then I don’t know what does.”

“I’ve never seen the Soviet’s so scared,” he chuckled. “You stood there in front of the General and just laughed as you pressed the button and I think he might have pissed himself.”

She was really laughing then, her body shaking to pieces in his arms and he closed his eyes in agony at the pain in her voice.

“Easy,” he whispered, his heart hammering painfully as he tried to come to terms with his partner’s dying. “Don’t want to bleed out on me, baby.”

She sighed and patted his chest weakly. “You should run Clint,” she whispered. “I can hear the tanks and you know as well as I do that Fury won’t come for us as long as the Soviets are still around. You need to get to the last rendezvous check point.”

“That’s almost five miles away Tia! I may be strong as an ox but I can’t carry you for five miles,” he snapped as he forced her chin up towards him. Her eyes were slits, mere flickers in the gathering gloom and he longed for her to open them fully so he could drown in their dark depths once more.

“Clint…” she whispered, tears sliding from the corners of her eyes to mix with the blood on her chin. “Don’t be an idiot.  You have to leave me.”

He stared at her, his heart breaking as he realized she had given up.

His girl had given up.

“No,” he snarled fiercely, his eyes closing as he rested his forehead against hers. “No don’t you force me to do this Tatiana!”

 _Was it only yesterday that we made love in that hotel on the square?_  he thought in bewilderment as she writhed in agony in his arms. _Surely it’s been a millennium since I kissed you into this goddamn dress. You tasted like vanilla and sunlight and sex…Oh Tia…Don’t do this to me._

How much could change in one day.

“Clint, please,” she whispered brokenly, “please listen to me. I’m done. I was done the moment that bullet took me. But you’re not!”

Her hand rose to grip his chin weakly and somehow she found the strenght to shake him. “You are not done Clint Barton,” she hissed as he stared at her. “You can fight. You can help Fury take these bastards out. You are not dead. I am. There’s nothing they’re going to be able to do for me. So you need to grow a pair and get out. Now.”

“Tatiana,” he groaned but she shook her head. “Just stop Clint,” she sighed, her hand falling from his chin. “Just…sing to me.”

He stilled at that and frowned. “S-sing to you? Why?”

She was smiling, her hand tangled in his uniform and he realized she was almost gone.

 _She’s almost gone Clint,_ he thought wildly, his mind freezing in shock.   _Your partner_ _is almost gone. Tia’s dying… **Do something.**_

“Sing to me please,” she whispered. “That lullaby you sing to me when we’re done with a mission. I…I like that song.”

Distantly, he heard Russian accents heading in the direction of their hiding place, but he did not have the energy to run.

Not right now.

First he had to sing Tatiana to sleep, just like he did every night after a mission.

“Okay, baby,” he whispered as he wrapped his arms around her weakening body. “I can do that…”

Then as her breath grew ragged and the doors of the building next to them was thrown open forcefully and a tank came to a stop out on their block, he began to sing her to sleep.

Just like he always did…

Always would…

_Goodnight, my angel, now it's time to dream_  
 _And dream how wonderful your life will be_  
 _Someday your child may cry and if you sing this lullaby_  
 _Then in your heart there will always be a part of me…_

“Go Clint,” she whispered as her eyes glazed and her breath rattled in her lungs. “Get out of here.”

He groaned and pressed his forehead to hers, choking out the very last stanza of the lullaby; her fingers trailed down his cheek to press against his chest as she whispered the words to him, even as her body lost all sensation and her mind drifted into gray nothingness.

 _Someday we'll all be gone but lullabies go on and on_  
 _They never die,_ _t_ _hat's how you and I will be…_

She was gone with the last word but it was okay because so was he; as the doors of their bank were thrown open and the stairs trembled with the boots of the soldiers coming to search the building for the spies they knew were trapped there, he was half a block over, tears streaming down his face as he made his way to their last desperate rendezvous.

He didn’t say a single word to the two handlers waiting for him beside the Quinjet in the middle of a field, five miles out of Tavnik and they let him be, for a few moments at least.

He only looked over his shoulder to the burning town he’d almost died in and smiled.

“Goodnight my angel,” he whispered as he saluted his girl one last time. “You made my life pretty damn wonderful.”

And then as the bank they had hid in exploded in a spray of brick and blown mortar, he was climbing into the jet, his heart as frozen as the snow starting to fall over Bosnia.  By the time the Soviet's realized one of the spies they'd been chasing was unaccounted for, he was long gone gone, heading back to the West and the undoubtedly painful questions he’d have to face from the Director and his stoic assistant, Maria Hill.

But, unlike the Soviets, he had no idea that the girl he’d left in Tavnik, Bosnia was still drawing breath.

He had not seen the soldiers spill into the room she lay in.

He had not seen their captain press his fingers to the faintly beating pulse in her neck.

Clint Barton, agent of SHIELD, had no way of knowing that by the time he was flying over Switzerland, his partner was being brought to the Motherland to become the plaything of the Red Room.

He would never know what became of his partner and lover Tatiana Rashi because he thought she was dead.

By the time the Soviet’s got their hands on her, she might as well have been.

Tatiana stopped existing the moment that captain pressed his fingers to her neck.

She became something far worse than an Agent of SHIELD.

She became an agent of Department X.

But even after they erased Tatiana, wiped her mind clean for the Motherland, a small bit of her remained.

And it would forever puzzle her Russian handlers.

“Goodnight my angel, now it’s time to dream,” she would whisper as they sent her out into the field, to commit the crimes they themselves were not brave enough to complete.

There was something…broken about the Kestrel and for the lives of her overseeing commanders they would never find a way to fix her.

At least she was good at her job.

That was what they told themselves, each time they woke her for a mission, their eyes wary as the ice fell from her figure and her dark eyes flashed open to gaze once more upon the world.

“Someday we’ll all be gone,” she’d whisper as they programmed her for whichever mission she’d been handed, “but lullabies will go on and on…”

They never could get that lullaby free of her.

It just became a part of her remaining personality.

And oh, how it scared those in the Red Room Academy.


	2. The Lullaby in the Night

_**Omsk, Russia** _   
_**And** _   
_**New York City** _   
_**Late November, 2012** _

They woke Agent 0, call-sign Kestrel, on the first snow of winter.

It had been months since she had emerged from her programmed sleep for a mission and as her limbs loosened and the ice fell from her hair to turn into slushy puddles at her bare toes, she could not help but laugh.

Finally, she was awake.

Finally she would have a chance to prove herself.

Prove that she was not a broken toy of her Motherland.

They brought her to the Commander’s office once she had been cleansed of any remaining cryo-ice and dressed in soft clothes that would not chafe her tender sleep-healed skin.

The Commander made sure she knew how important this mission was for their country right off.

“You are being sent to break SHIELD and their team of superheroes, Agent 0,” he growled as the tip of his cigar glowed.

She trembled in feral excitement, baring her teeth in a silent snarl.

The Avengers.

She laughed at the prospect of destroying the one thing she had been raised to hate.

The Commander gazed at her with worry and trepidation in his gaze.

“Agent 0 you understand what this could mean for us, yes? This compromising of the Avengers?”

She rolled her eyes at the Commander’s orders and shrugged too thin shoulders, reveling in the ease the right one rolled with. She’d dislocated it on her last assignment; they’d set it before putting her to sleep. It seemed healed now. “Yes, Commander,” she said coldly. “It is simple enough to complete. No need to worry.”

His dark eyes, shadowed from beneath the bill of his military cap, glinted dangerously. “I think you underestimate Stark and his friends, Agent,” he mused as he fiddled with his ridiculous handlebar mustache.

She scoffed. “Stark, psh. He is nothing but a fly on the Motherland’s back. I can handle whatever he throws my way.”

She was fairly bouncing up and down on her toes, the soft leather of her shoes squeaking, her long blonde hair swinging with her impatient movement. She was young, yes, but she was strong and she was smart.

That was more than most Agents of her organization could boast of.

And besides, they would be programming her soon. She could feel the chip at the base of her skull and she knew they would give her the skills needed to complete this mission. They would not give her any room for failure.

This was far too important to mess up on.

“I can do this mission Commander, do not doubt me, I was woken just for this,” she said, her tone only slightly pleading and the burly man sitting before her at his massive oak desk sighed.

“Very well Agent. I trust in you. Just remember, we need documents, not Stark’s head. Get in and get out, limited contact. Even you won’t be able to take on these Avengers head on.”

She almost scoffed at that but then she remembered the video footage of the failed attack in New York City almost a year ago and she knew her commander was right. She was strong, she was fast and she was far better trained than some of those ridiculous superheroes, but she could not hope to defeat them on a level playing field.

That was not her style.

With a cocky salute to her shadowy Commander she was escorted from his dim office and led to the programming room. They would give her the specific skills needed for this mission, she knew, not because they did not trust her to handle the task without assistance but because they wanted to make certain of complete success.

She did not take it personally when they uploaded a very specific skill set into her brain, the chip humming as she rose, from her chair. She did not wish to fail. Besides, this program matched her natural abilities perfectly. It was like wearing a well-fitted leather jacket, tailored just for her.

She reveled in the new strength trailing through her fingers and longed to practice these abilities she had gained with one computer programming.

But that would have to wait.

Her handler was unshackling her now; providing her with weapons, tools and clothes needed for a break-in to Tony Stark’s fortress of narcissism.

“Remember Kestrel,” he murmured as he slipped a miniaturized comm unit into her ear. She focused on him with difficulty, her head teeming with the mission’s specifics and her body’s desire to fight, and smiled as the gray haired man stood back from her. “You must find those documents and you must get out of the Tower. That is all. Do not take part in any personal vendetta.”

“’Personal vendetta’?” she asked curiously as he led her out into the snow towards a waiting jet. She wondered if this had anything to do with her strong desire to prove herself to her commanders, to prove she was not a flawed tool.

He hesitated, his dark eyes settling for a moment on her and she shivered at the cold knowledge in his gaze.

“It is nothing Kestrel,” he muttered as they approached the jet. “Just remember your mission and use the skills we have given you. And do not forget to check-in every ten minutes. If we do not hear from you for more than ten we will extract you.”

“Yes, yes,” she said with an imperious wave as she settled into the cold leather seats of her Agency’s jet. “I will not forget. Do not be so condescending Chekov.”

Her handler, his name was Anton Chekov she knew, shifted for a moment, dark surprise flashing across his eyes as she named him but he did not scold her for her familiarity. Instead he nodded to the pilot who saluted and began taxiing the plane into the storm.

His dark eyes did not leave her for the duration of the ten hour flight but she did not mind. It reminded her of someone she had once known, long ago, with his calm blue eyes and the tense set of his jaw.

He would get her out of the Tower. He would keep her safe from the Avengers. He would take care of her.

Like he always had.

Kestrel settled back into her seat and closed her eyes, her mind spinning over mission specifics, her mark’s architecture and the skills her people had programmed her with.

As her head rested against the back of her seat she could feel her chip press into the bones of her skull and she sighed.

It made her feel safe.

Without the chip she would be a no-one.

Just a little girl with a broken body and far too many ghosts to face.

Especially that ghost with the ice-blue eyes and the husky baritone, who sang to her when she slept.

“Goodnight my angel, now it’s time to sleep,” she whispered to herself as their jet began to bank for a silent and hidden landing outside of the City. She did not see Chekov’s worried glance at her soft lyric, nor the slight tensing of his body as her head lolled across the seat. Her lips lifted in a small smile as that song drifted through her mind once more.

“Goodnight my angel, now it’s time to dream,” she hummed as her hand rose to rub the back of her skull and her mind lurched sickeningly with the words she sang.

 _Why this ridiculous song Kestrel?_  she thought as the jet began to lower towards a private runway barely lit in the gloom. _Why must you always sing this when you are about to face SHIELD?_

Before she could panic about the odd abnormalities of her brain, they were landing and she emerged into the stark darkness of Jersey, her stance easy and her mind quiet now that the mission had begun.

The song was forgotten for now, as well as the anxiety its emergence had caused her.

She had a mission to complete. Her mind’s ghosts were the least of her worries.

Besides, there was a motorbike waiting for her and with the skills she had been given, she knew she’d be able to ride with ease into the City. .

A black sedan waited for her handler and her bodyguards.

She laughed as she swung onto the bike and set the helmet on her head; Chekov approached her as she inspected the bike and handed her the equipment she would need for the heist.

“Good luck Kestrel,” he muttered as he watched her shrug into the straps. “Do not do anything foolish.”

She smiled and raised her gloved hand to pat his cheek. “You worry yourself too much Anton,” she muttered with a smirk. “I shall be fine. Just be ready for me.”

He nodded. “We will keep you safe Kestrel,” he said and she laughed.

 _I wonder if he knows the lullaby_ , she thought as he walked away from her. _Will he sing it to me when my mission is done? Is that how I know it? Does he sing to me when I go to sleep?_

She shook her head and turned her mind to the matter at hand.

Breaking into Stark’s Tower.

Finding the documents needed to debunk their mission against her people.

That was all she needed to do.

With the backpack of tools resting against her spine and the computerized abilities twining into her cerebellum she knew this was going to be an easy mission to complete.

How could it not be?

Her Commander had programmed her specifically for this.

And after her last failure, they would make sure to give her the skills needed to ensure she never failed ever again.

With a cocky salute towards the waiting sedan, which held her handler and his cronies, she kicked the bike into life in one smooth movement and with a rev of its engine, peeled off towards the City glowing in the distance.

This was going to be fun.

“Someday we'll all be gone,” she whispered into the wind blowing through the Jersey turnpike. Tears pricked her eyes from behind the screen of her helmet but she ignored them.

Impossibly, despite the programming bombarding her mind and the orders racking her body, she continued the song that she really should not have been able to remember. Her smooth alto gave the words life, even as she slid unnoticed into the City and made her way towards Manhattan. In the distance she could see the looming Tower with its ‘STARK’ logo glowing near the roof.

The Tower. Her target.

But while she was focused on her mission, the memory of cold blue eyes leaning over her in a burnt out building and a husky baritone whispering the words that would forever haunt her, even when she lost her mind, also kept her attention.

That was always the way with her though.

She was almost…dual minded.

 _Far too many voices in your head Kestrel,_ she told herself. _Losing your mind I think._

She had to sing the song though, just like she had to complete the mission.

“But lullabies go on and on...They never die, that's how you and I will be.”

She gazed up at Stark’s Tower as her voice trailed away and she smiled coldly into the darkness.

She was here.

Time for business.

“I am going in,” she said, her accented voice as cold as the wind whipping down on her. “Don’t wait up Chekov.”

She could just see his headlights a few alleys over and she knew he was watching her carefully, his eyes intent for any sign of her glitching.

 _But I am not going to glitch,_ she thought to herself fiercely as she pulled a tiny computer from her bag and knelt in the shadows at the foot of the Tower, near a ventilation shaft. _The programming is sound tonight and the mission will be easy enough to complete. Anton does not need to know what else I am thinking about. He’ll just ice me over and I’ll never wake up ever again. That is always the way with broken toys. …And I think I’m very broken…_

And with that knowledge swirling around in her brain as well as the impossible lullaby and her Commander’s orders, she hacked into the Tower’s security with one swipe of her fingers across her tiny computer’s keys.

This was going to be far too easy.

“The Commander owes me a better mission,” she hissed as she aimed her grappling hook up towards a smooth ledge nearly fifty feet above her. “A novice could do this.”

She began to climb the face of Stark Tower, the claws in her boots providing her the traction she needed against the windows and none noticed her tiny figure as she climbed towards the fifty third floor.

They’d told her that was Stark’s floor with his office and its private computer with private files from Nick Fury she needed to retrieve for her department.

That’s where she had to be so that’s where she was going to go.

She welcomed the burn in her arms and the cold whip of the wind bearing down on her.

It made her feel alive.

It helped her forget the memory of her limbs freezing in cryo-ice after every mission.

It helped her forget those ice-blue eyes and that soft voice in the back of her head, singing a half-remembered lullaby as tanks crept towards a last hiding place down a smoking street.

It helped her forget…everything.

Impossible though it may have seemed, it was actually fairly easy, the forgetting and the climbing.

“I’m in,” she hissed almost half an hour later as she slid open a heavy plate glass window that was nearly twice her height and eased into a darkened room bearing a huge TV and a really beautiful baby grand piano. “I think this is Stark’s office.”

It’s so dark, she thought in a moment of panic. Where are the lights?

 _No, stop Kestrel!_  she thought as she shook her head and began threading her way through the office towards the desk. Y _ou can do this without a light. God knows you’ve done it before. Haven’t you?_

For a moment she froze uncertainly in the middle of this dark office and her hands rose to twist in panic at the hair at the nape of her neck.

“What am I doing? Is this right?” she whispered as she stared blankly at the tips of her boots and her fingers pressed against the bones of her skull. Her vision lurched sickeningly and she hissed between her teeth as she staggered against the piano.

But, like always, Chekov was there, his voice in her ear, calling her back to sanity. “ _Kestrel,_ ” he muttered, his voice calm, even and she shuddered in relief as her world righted itself. “ _Come in please. Are you all right?_ ”

“Yes, I am fine. Just shaking out my fingers Chekov,” she cringed at the lie but he did not need to know about her panic. No one needed to know. She was fine. _Just fine. Breathe Kestrel. Remember your training._ She smiled brightly into the gloom as she spotted a desk with a very thin computer sitting on its surface. “I have found what I need to break,” she said as she strode with purpose towards her target. “I will check-in in ten. Now go, you distract me.”

A soft sigh and then, “ _We trust in you Kestrel. Now hurry_.”

She rolled her eyes before hurrying to make up lost time. Soon she had hacked Stark’s security measures, which were minimal, and she was smiling and humming to herself.

The infernal lullaby drifted past her lips but she did not notice, nor did she notice the bow and quiver resting near the doorway. Or the winged mask sitting on the shiny surface of the piano.

She had a mission to complete; there was no time to notice such trivial details of the space she’d invaded.

And according to the schematics she had been provided this should have been one of Stark’s offices.

Not a private residence for an Avenger.

Kestrel had barely begun the tedious task of hacking the futuristic computer sitting on the desk when a door opened and a man of medium height, wearing a rumpled suit and smelling of cigarettes, cheap beer and a woman’s perfume, stumbled into the room singing a song she almost recognized in a husky voice.

“Play me a song, you’re the piano man...”

She froze, her fingers suspended over the blue lit keys of the black keyboard and gasped as his eyes settled on her shadowy figure, “You are not Tony Stark!”

He only smirked and loosened his tie a bit further.

“Nope, I’m the fucking Queen of England. You chose the wrong guy to mess with buddy.”

Her heart froze as he moved impossibly fast towards the bow she had not noticed before now and leveled an arrow in her direction.

But she was faster than he could ever be and he was drunk.

She would neutralize this imbecile and continue her mission.

She was halfway across the room even as the string of his bow brushed his cheek.

The arrow hitting the glass of the windows made a soft _plink_ and the sound of her fist connecting with his jaw made a most satisfying _crack_.

“Ease up kid,” he sputtered as he fell to the floor before her. She snorted and began to move away, giving him her back, despite years of training she had undergone to become an Agent. “Give the beer nuts a chance to settle first.”

He was laughing, even as he scrabbled on the floor like a topsy-turvy turtle. She only rolled her eyes.

“Pathetic,” she growled, certain that she had taken care of him with one blow.

She realized too late, this drunk was an Avenger and though he was intoxicated, that did not mean he was going to go down without a fight.

His foot connecting with the back of her knees took her by surprise and she slammed bodily into the floor, the breath whooshing out of her lungs with the impact.

She curled in agony around her chest and gasped helplessly as he flipped her onto her back.

He was on her before she could have stopped him; his wiry body far stronger than she would have thought possible and he neutralized her with ease. The bastard’s legs clamped around her hips, stilling her thrashing in one quick movement as his hand caught her slender wrists and planted them to the floor. His other hand rested against her sternum, successfully pinning her before she could even catch her breath.

Her chest heaved as she gasped and choked which in turn caused his hand to slide just a bit to the right, pressing firmly against the soft swell of her breast; her gasp matched his in that single moment.

“Holy shit, you’re a woman!” he choked out as he palmed her, his wide hand cupping her with ease. “Is this some sick trick of Tony’s? I told him to stop sending me escorts!”

He was really laughing now.

She couldn’t fight him off. He was pressing what air she could gain from her lungs and she could feel herself suffocating, even as his hand squeezed her through her shirt and he hardened against her belly.

That was too much.

“Let-me-go,” she gasped, her hips bucking weakly against his but he was too strong and he held her in the most uncomfortable way; she could feel every muscle of his body tensing against her, including his cock and she would have laughed if she could find the breath for it.

She was not desperate though, despite this compromising situation.

Despite his very warm body grinding against hers as she writhed uselessly beneath him.

She could still get out of this.

 _Think Kestrel, think of your training-call Chekov!_  she thought wildly. But it was no good. Her fall had dislodged the comm unit in her ear and she could just see it in the corner of her eye. Resting uselessly beneath the piano. Maybe if she was lucky her handler would realize she was trapped when she missed her check-call in a few minutes.

“I’m going to kill you,” she growled as his hips rolled against hers and his hand gripped her wrists solidly.

“Who the hell are you lady?” he asked, his eyes sparkling in the half-light. “How’d you get past JARVIS? God, stop squirming. You’re giving me a condition!”

 _Ha! A condition_ , she growled to herself as her legs thrashed and tried to find purchase on the hardwood floors she rested upon. _I will give him a condition he will not like._

“So you’re Russian, huh?” he mused as he pressed more of his weight against her, pinching her through the sleek fabric she wore. “I’d know that accent anywhere, and damn you’ve got a thick one.” His fingers were growing rough now, painful, and she squirmed, trying to pull away from him. He simply pressed harder though and she swore she saw a flash of very white teeth smiling at her through the gloom.

She would have gasped if she’d had the air; instead she spat out a quick, “Kríženec,” which made him laugh. “Language, sweetheart,” he muttered. “Guess that answers my first question. Not Russian then, but definitely Eastern. Huh, so what do you people want with us? Thought we took care of the Soviets years ago,” he grumbled and she almost laughed at the irritation in his voice.

Thankfully his hold was loosening just a bit on her wrists and he hadn’t seen her face yet so she still had a chance…

She started to twist her hands in his, trying desperately to free herself, and his head cocked curiously.

“Let’s see who we have here. Right. Lights, JARVIS,” he barked as he leaned into her, his breath smelling of beer and peanuts. She gagged, even as the lights came up. Before she could pull away, his fingers released her breast to tangle into her hood and he yanked it from her face quickly.

“What the hell?!” he gasped, before sitting back in shock against her raised knees.

She was able to gaze into the face of her molester then and as his ice-blue eyes widened in recognition, she smiled and twisted one hand free of his to strike him soundly in the throat.

“Told you to let me go, bastard,” she hissed as he fell away from her, choking and sputtering. She rose and began to move away towards the window and her escape but his hand shot out to grip her ankle, stopping her as his fingers dug into the leather of her boot; she turned in time to see him stab a tranquilizer dart from his bow at his side into her calf.

“No,” she hissed as she strove to pull away from him but her vision spun sickeningly with the effects of the powerful sedatives now pumping through her bloodstream and she could not stand upright any longer. “Let me go!” she groaned before collapsing across the piano keyboard with an ungodly clamor and then to the bench.

He did, but it was too late; she began to slide off of the smooth mahogany bench as her vision grayed and the last thing she noticed as he rushed to catch her was the ice-blue of his eyes and his husky voice whispering in agony, “Tatiana, what the hell are you doing here?”

Her lips lifted into a dreamy smile and she whispered as her gloved fingers rose to stroke the light stubble of his beard, “Goodnight my angel…”

And then her mind froze with a painful lurch and she fell asleep in her enemy’s arms.

Her enemy with ice-blue eyes and a husky baritone whispering her name over and over again…

_Clint_


	3. Midnight Calls

Clint came to her in the middle of the night, which in and of itself wasn’t unusual.

They’d been partners for more years than either cared to remember and they’d been something more than SHIELD’s lackey’s for even more than that.

Although, that last part had begun to sour in recent months.

Mostly because of her and certain rumors that had been flitting around in the shadows of SHIELD lately.

About an assassin from a by-gone era of Red who could never be beaten.

She’d begun to listen to those rumors, though, and by consequence had found out there was more than one way to be compromised.

So when Clint Barton’s hand rested on her foot and his voice called to her while she slept, she didn’t panic outright.

She still woke with a pistol in her hand and Russian curses on her lips.

He only smiled at her from his position at the foot of her bed, with his hands raised in a placating gesture.

Some things would never change, they had realized long ago.

“Easy Natasha,” he muttered as she stared at him wild-eyed. “Just me. Just Clint.”

“Clint,” she muttered as her chest heaved and the Russian dried up as quickly as it had appeared. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Her green eyes, marginally calmer now that some of her dream-infused panic had faded, flitted towards her bedside table where a phone with the Avengers symbol spinning on its screen rested and she frowned.

No summoning from Stark or Fury.

 _What’s going on?_  she thought as her eyes turned back to Clint.

He was pale. Sweating. And there was a massive bruise on his chin and a red mark on his throat.

Her eyes narrowed as she lowered the gun and she sighed. “Did you get in another bar fight Barton? I told you, you need to stop doing this to yourself, stop singing Billy Joel songs and stop picking fights with riff-raff! You’re better than that!”

He was shaking his head, his eyes glowing with manic energy and her frown deepened.

Barton… _panicking_? That didn’t seem right at all.

“Not the bar. Something else. Look,” he hesitated and glanced towards the door, tensing as he did so and she could swear her heart was trying to beat out of her chest at that moment. She’d never seen her partner this shaken. Never. “Tasha, I need your help with something. Can you come to my floor?”

She frowned, trying to see where this unusual game was leading and she wondered briefly if this was just an elaborate way of him asking for a late night fuck.

But Barton didn’t look like he was having a sexual crisis…

He just looked like he was having a...crisis.

“Yeah Clint,” she said slowly as she buried the gun under her pillow once more and combed her fingers through her longish hair. He was staring at her, something like surprise in his eyes. She smiled. Even after all of these years he could still be surprised when she agreed to help him. “Let me just get dressed first.”

He was shaking his head again. “No time,” he ground out as he grabbed her hand and pulled her from the bed. “I don’t know how long the tranq will last.”

That really caught her attention.

“’Tranq’? Barton what have you _done_?!” her voice cracked as he dragged her from the room but he didn’t slow.

And he didn’t explain.

 _Oh God_ , she thought desperately to herself as he almost threw her into the elevator and she skidded across the cold tile of the tiny room. _He’s got a sedated hooker in his bed and now he needs her taken care of and **what the hell Barton!**_

He was still wild eyed and she could smell the fear rolling off of him, as well as the rich smells of that dive bar he always frequented after a mission. His shirt sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, showing his muscular forearms and she watched as he flexed his hands, making the tendons pop in stark relief against his tan skin.

“Clint,” she whispered but he shook his head. “Can’t tell you yet Tash. Wait till we get to my place. I-I don’t know who’s listening right now.”

His hand rose to press against the bruise on his jaw and she frowned.

Why was he concerned about who was listening to them?

Stark undoubtedly was.

Why didn’t he want Stark to hear this?

 _What did you do Clint?_  she thought but didn’t say. _What are you involved in here?_

They were at his floor, finally, and as the doors swept open silently he caught her hand once more and dragged her down the draughty hall towards his apartment.

She noticed right off that he had dismantled JARVIS’s security protocols. And judging by the mass of wires still sparking from the panel by his door, it hadn’t gone well. She almost smiled when he removed the very expensive stainless steel chair from his kitchen from underneath the doorknob but seeing his desperation grow as he opened the door, she didn’t.

Finally, as she eased into his apartment and shivered (it was already ungodly cold in the City, and it was only November) he turned and stopped her, his hands on her elbows.

“Natasha,” he said slowly, his eyes lowered so all she could see was the pale splash of his blonde lashes across his cheeks. “Natasha, how long have you known me?”

She hesitated, her gaze locked on his face and she let herself think back on the ten years or so she’d worked with Clint Barton.

“Long enough for it not to matter, Clint,” she said with a sigh. “You know I’ll be at your side no matter what happens.”

He shuddered; his body, tight until now, loosened as he sighed and a part of her, the part that wasn’t broken, longed to take him into her arms and press tender kisses to his lips and jaw.

“Thank you,” he whispered as he finally raised his eyes to hers. She froze at the hopeless excitement she saw there and she knew in that moment that everything about their partnership was going to change.

She could almost smell it.

“Clint,” she whispered and they both winced at the groan in her voice. She took a deep breath and pressed her forehead to his, her eyes fluttering closed against the agony she felt at this inevitable loss of her partner. “What happened?”

Again he didn’t answer.

Not really.

“Come with me. It’ll be easier if I just show you,” he muttered, his voice rough.

Instead he caught her hand and pulled her towards his bedroom; her eyes were wide as she took in the disarray of his living room. The piano bench was toppled, his old mask from his early days with SHIELD tossed under the instrument.

It wasn’t this that caught her attention, though, as she was drawn through the room, her small hand clasped tightly in his.

It was the bag full of what looked like a burglar’s tools resting on his desk and the glowing keys of the keyboard he never used that she noticed.

“Someone broke in, didn’t they?” she gasped as they rushed through the hallway which led past his personal shooting range, kitchen and massive bathroom, towards his bedroom door. Which was stymied as well, by a kitchen chair.

He nodded and yanked the chair free and then as his hand rested on this door he glanced at her over his shoulder and sighed.

“Promise you won’t panic, Tash,” he said as his hand twisted the knob.

She shivered and would have smacked him for the melodramatics but a part of her knew this was not melodrama on his part.

It was just the easy care he took with her.

Whatever was waiting for her beyond this door was going to scare her.

Shitless.

“Oh God,” she whispered as he pushed the door open and stepped into the deep shadows that filled his bedroom. “This is fucked up Barton.”

He simply stretched out his hand and caught a handful of her satiny nightgown and dragged her into the room.

“Don’t scream,” he hissed as he pulled her towards the bed.

He should have known better.

The Black Widow never screamed.

She took action.

Although this time…

This time she was a little shocked.

“Clint?” she croaked after a few seconds of staring at the unconscious blonde handcuffed to his bedpost. “Why do you have a Russian spy in your bed?”

He jumped guiltily as her green eyes settled on him and cleared his throat. “Well, uh, would you believe, uh…” he trailed off and ran his hands nervously over his tousled blonde hair. She was staring at him fully now, her arms folded over her chest and her lips pursed, looking for all she was worth, like an irritated mother. He glanced from woman to woman and then blurted, “She’s Tatiana, Natasha. She’s my partner. M-my old partner. The one I thought was dead. The one who died in my arms. The…she uh…Tia…”

Her eyebrows had risen but as his voice trailed away she sighed.

“I know who she is Barton,” she muttered as she turned back to the girl and began to unlock the handcuff buckled around the bedpost.

“You do?” he sputtered, completely floored.

Natasha bowed her head over the blonde’s limp hand. “Yes,” she whispered, her head starting to pound as unwelcome memories threatened to overwhelm her. “I know her.”

He watched as she lowered Tatiana’s arm and hurried to help her as she began to ease the blonde’s body out of the bed. She nodded towards the chair sitting by his bed, the chair with the arm rests and the stiff back and he frowned.

“How do you know who she is, Tash?” he asked as they settled Tatiana’s body in the chair. He kept a firm hold on her shoulders as Natasha moved around the room gathering up a few of his more hideous ties and another pair of handcuffs, this pair covered in fuzzy pink fur, and he couldn’t help but shiver at the cold blankness in her eyes.

He knew that look.

It was the look of an agent who knew they’d been beaten for good.

He’d seen it far too many times in his life.

“Natasha,” he said slowly, his heart starting to pound fearfully but she shook her head.

“Just tie her up Clint,” she said, her voice cold, empty. “She’s going to wake up soon and we need to keep her restrained until we know what damage has been done to her.”

“’Damage’?” he repeated, his voice horrified as he watched his current partner begin wrapping his brightly colored and patterned ties around his old partner’s limbs. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she snapped and then sighed, pressing her forehead to the cold metal of the chair’s armrest. Glancing up at him she continued, her voice just as devoid of emotion as before, “I mean that she may not be Tatiana anymore Clint. She may be…” Broken, she thought but didn’t say. Swallowing, she closed her eyes tightly for a moment, bracing herself for the pain her words would cause him, “She may be like me when you found me ten years ago Clint.”

The flash of pain and recognition in his eyes was enough to shatter her and she winced.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she finished tying off her knots around the blonde’s elbows. “But Tatiana probably doesn’t exist anymore Clint. She’s just…just a toy now.”

“No,” he ground out as he stood. “No, you can’t know that! How can you say that?! It’s Tatiana, she’s Tia! She’s the same!”

“No Clint,” she muttered as she toyed with the purple tie she’d used on the spy’s right ankle. “She’s not the same.”

“How do you know?” he hissed as he grabbed her arm and yanked her up so he could meet her gaze. “How do you know?!”

She broke free of him and took a step back, her chest heaving as she fought to remain calm. He was staring at her, murder in his gaze and she knew, knew that, despite the truth sitting before them in the form of the unconscious blonde from out of both of their pasts, that he still loved Tatiana Rashi.

And if there was one thing she had learned in all of her years on this godforsaken world, it was that love made even the wisest man blind.

“I know Clint,” she said, her voice even despite the agony she felt for him. “Because she was my sister in the Red Room Academy. She was the Kestrel and I was the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier was our teacher.”

He did not react.

His eyes went cold though. Blank.

Her own closed and she longed to cry, to mourn with him.

But she could not.

Instead, she just broke his heart further.

“Tatiana Rashi hasn’t existed for twenty-four years Clint. She died in Bosnia. This is just her ghost.”

And then she called Stark.

**

_God my head. My head feels like it is exploding! What’s happened? Did the Soviet’s find us? Am I dead?_

_Wait…_

_Why did…why am I…_

_The mission. Agent 0 being sent to break into Stark Tower._

_Or…was it to blow up an Embassy?_

_Who is Agent 0?_

_Who are the Avengers?_

_Who is Chekov?_

_Glitching…I think the chip is glitching._

_What chip…_

_Goodnight my angel…_

_God, my head. Why does my head hurt so bad?_

_WHAT IS GOING ON?!_

**_WHERE IS CLINT?!_ **

It was with that final panicked thought that her vision erupted in an explosion of white-hot agony and she screamed, her voice bursting free of numb lips; unnoticed, blood began to dribble from her nose and ears with the violence of her mental duress.

She screamed in desperation, in agony.

And that scared her.

More than the dual-memories of a failed mission in Bosnia and a surely botched mission in New York City she barely understood, threatening to overwhelm her.

So she screamed for the only one who could hope to help her.

She needed him.

Almost as much as a heavy painkiller.

“ _CLINT! HELP ME!_ ”

Her voice trailed away and her mind shattered, her body slumping weakly in her bonds, even as the door of the bedroom she was being kept in burst open.

He was the first one to reach her, sliding to his knees before her chair, those beautiful blue eyes she had loved for so long wild with fear as he gazed at her pale face, covered in blood.

She did not see him though.

Her mind was spinning with broken coding and far too memories and voices for one skull to hold.

She was breaking.

Falling to pieces.

But he wouldn’t find that out until she woke once more.

And then it would be too late.

She was a broken toy.

_...time to be shelved away..._


	4. You and I Will Be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just apologizing in advance for my Russian. I'm Slovenian so the language is similar enough that I have a general idea of what I'm doing, but bear with me. If there's anything blatantly wrong, please let me know.

“No. I won’t let you do this to her.” Clint’s voice was sharp, tense with barely controlled anger and Natasha flinched. Her partner hadn’t been this angry since the early days of their team-up, when the loss of Tatiana had still been sharp.

She supposed his anger now was her fault then.

“Clint,” she began gently, her voice soft in the still air of his bedroom. “We have to try…”

His eyes were locked on the still figure of Tatiana Rashi, still bound in the chair. It had been five minutes since she’d screamed for him but there had been nothing since then. Neither wanted to think about what that meant.

“We should take her to Bruce and Tony, so they can run some scans, see what the damage is, see if there really is a chip…”

He turned away at another mention of a chip and she flinched as his hands rose to fold behind his head; it was a stance he affected when he was worried or angry about something and it never boded well.

Things tended to get broken and harsh words were usually thrown around.

She couldn’t blame him. He had every reason to be angry, with her and with SHIELD. Especially if their agency had known about Tatiana’s existence.

Which they probably had.

“If there is a chip,” he said after a few moments of this tense silence, “what do we do? Do we try to remove it? Do we leave it and hope she remembers what’s going on? Who…who I am?”

She flinched as his voice cracked but shook her head. “It’s difficult Clint, I won’t be able to tell you the answer until we get her some medical attention. I don’t even know where the chip is and if it’s still functioning. She…it’s difficult. I’m sorry.”

His eyes were cold, blank, as he gazed at her and then he sighed. “Don’t be Tash,” he muttered as he moved past her to Tatiana’s side. His hand rested on her shoulder for a brief moment and he smiled. She tried not to shiver at the anguish in the expression but he still saw it.

“Let’s get her to Stark. I don’t like how long it’s been since she woke. You said she would probably have handlers?” His voice was not the same; it was harsh and she could tell by the tense muscles in his jaw and neck that he was just barely restraining himself from striking out. “We should do something about them.”

She watched as he bent to untie Tatiana’s bindings and she sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. Get her to Stark. I’ll be at the infirmary in five.”

And then she was gone and it felt like she was saying goodbye to her best friend.

The last thing she saw before leaving his room was his hand rising to stroke Tatiana’s cheek and she could hear him whispering that lullaby he would sing when he was truly worried about a mission or when the Hulk was losing his focus.

It was Billy Joel’s _Lullaby_ and somehow it seemed right, him singing it to this woman from both of their past’s.

 _So that’s why he sings it after every mission. It’s her song_ , she thought sadly as she made her way to the lower levels of the Tower. She’d alert the security detail of possible trespassers and run her own sweep as well.

Maybe she’d find Tatiana’s handlers and they’d finally be able to clear up this mystery.

Maybe there’d finally be some closure.

As she walked, her bare feet making no noise on the chilly marble floors of the Tower’s foyer, she pulled out her SHIELD issued phone from the pocket of her robe and texted a contact she trusted.

She was going to get some answers. Even if it killed her.

 _We’ve had a break-in at the Tower_ , she wrote to her contact. _Op from Dept. X. Clint’s old partner. Know of this? NR_

The moment the message sent she sighed. She almost wished her friend wouldn’t respond. She didn’t think she could handle another betrayal from SHIELD. She didn’t think Clint could handle it.

_If SHIELD knows about Tatiana…what else are they keeping from us?_

Her blood ran cold at the thought and she shivered in trepidation. So many secrets. Her entire life was secrets and blood and this one…this one she had never thought to face again.

Now was not the time to think about this though. She had other important things to worry about. Like the Tower being attacked by Russians.

“Heighten the security measures,” she barked to the three guards who jumped to attention at the sight of one of Mr. Stark’s friends striding out of the shadows. “We may have some people trying to break in. Make sure JARVIS is online.”

The head security officer, Stark’s bodyguard, Happy Hogan, frowned but seeing how serious she was about this, nodded.

“Right away Miss Rushman,” he said. “Anything we should keep an eye out for?”

She gazed around the shadowy foyer and sighed. “Russians Happy. Keep an eye out for Russians. Probably three men. One will be older.”

That was always the Department’s way. An older agent, on the verge of retiring, would be paired with an operative. She still remembered hers. Anton Petrovka.

She’d killed him with his own gun.

“Anything we should know Miss Rushman?” Happy asked and she summoned a small smile.

“Not right now Happy,” she said as she turned away. She could feel all of the men’s gazes on her and she sighed. She should have changed out of her nightgown. With another glance over her shoulder, she continued, “We’ll let you know. I have to get to the infirmary now. Good night. Let me know the moment you find something.”

As she made her way to the elevator her phone buzzed and her heart skipped a beat.

 _This is it_ , she thought as she pulled the phone from her robe’s pocket once more. _Let’s see what kind of story I’m going to get this time._

She forced herself to keep walking, to keep her pace steady, even though she felt like her legs might give out under her. Somehow…

Somehow, she didn’t think this text was going to bear good news.

Finally, she opened the message and as the elevator closed behind her, she sagged against the wall and stared at the illuminated screen.

Her heart truly did stop then and she actually dropped the phone.

If anyone could have seen it, they’d have been shocked.

The Black Widow never lost her cool. Was never anything but calm and collected. A cold blooded killer, in every way.

The text message was simple. Just a few words written while her contact was on a mission somewhere.

But they scared her.

And they’d break Clint.

 _Yes_ , her contact had written. _We knew. Fury made a deal. Keep CB calm. BM_

She was still hunched over her phone when the elevator doors swept open. She barely responded when he asked, “Tash? You okay?”

The moment he touched her, she felt her heart break and she shook her head.

“No, I’m not okay,” she whispered as she raised her head to look at him.

Clint was staring at her, half-in the elevator, his eyes wide and she shuddered at the fear in his gaze.

“What’s happened?” he asked, his words stiff. His hand tightened around her shoulder but she did not wince at the pain of his fingers on her bones.

She didn’t feel it.

She didn’t feel anything.

“We have a problem,” she whispered as she held out her phone for him to take. He did, after a brief hesitation, his fingers tightening around the device almost as if he longed to snap it in two.

She watched him avidly as he unlocked the screen and began to read the messages there.

It was in that moment, as his eyes closed and a soft groan slid from his lips that she realized that they’d broken him for good now.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she caught his hand and brought it to her lips. “I am so sorry for this Clint.”

He shook his head and his legs finally gave out on him as he groaned once more. “I’m going to kill them for this. How…how could they do this to Tia? I thought she died. I left her in that room and SHIELD told me she was dead and oh God…”

He was shaking as she wrapped her arms around him; they knelt like this, on the floor of Tony Stark’s elevator, for far too long and she let him hold her, let him shake to pieces against her breast.

It was her job after all.

She was his partner.

She’d put him back together, just like he had put her back together all of those years ago when they’d found each other in the snow.

Just like they’d put Tatiana back together now, in Stark’s basement.

“Easy, easy,” she whispered into his ear over and over, her eyes closed against his anger and pain. “Easy, it’ll be okay. Easy, Clint.”

“I failed her Natasha,” he whispered as he pulled away from her finally.

She had no response for that.

Because in the end…

They’d all failed each other.

It was a terribly humbling realization to have.

**

Tatiana was seizing when Clint and Natasha returned to the infirmary.

She had to wrap her arms around him; he stopped struggling as she did but he still yearned towards his old partner and a soft groan slid from his lips as she thrashed.

“Easy Clint,” Natasha muttered. “Easy. Bruce will get her straightened out. It’s the chip, it’s short circuiting.”

Her words did not calm him.

“’ _Short circuiting_ ’?! Natasha!” His blue eyes were horrified as he watched Bruce Banner insert a needle into the IV port attached to Tatiana’s wrist. “Let me go, I have to go to her.”

“No!” Tony Stark barked from his position at the bank of computers located in the middle of the wide room. “She’s unstable Barton. She needs to level out before we can figure out what’s going on with her.”

“What’s going on, Stark,” Natasha snapped from their position by the doorway, “is that you have a Department X agent in your infirmary and the computer programming she’s wired into has become damaged and it’s wreaking havoc on her neurological abilities.” Clint groaned again but she ignored him. Instead she focused on the doctor, who had finally halted Tatiana’s seizures and was now resuming the scans they had been running on her. “We have to wipe the chip and then remove it.”

“’Wipe it’?” Tony repeated, his voice almost horrified. “What do you mean?”

Bruce’s eyes rose to hers, dark knowledge in his gaze. “That’s going to be dangerous Natasha,” he said, his voice gentle despite the tension they all felt. “We don’t know what that will do to her.”

She hesitated before loosening her grip on Clint. “Yes we do. It’s been done before,” she said gently as she approached the gentle doctor whose fingers were rubbing his patient’s gently as he studied the results racking up on his tablet’s screen. His eyebrows rose as she settled beside him and sighed. “You know I’m right, Bruce,” she said, her voice soft and her eyes intent upon his.

His brown eyes were thoughtful as he nodded, saying “How will we get her back to normal? None of us knew her before the chip was placed. How can we fix her memories…” he trailed off at the pointed glance she shot in Clint’s direction and he frowned. “You’re right. I was being stupid. He’s perfect.”

Clint’s eyes were wide as he glanced from doctor to partner and he frowned. “’Perfect’? Me? Why? What am I going to do?”

Natasha flinched at the panic in his voice and stretched a hand over the hospital bed to grip his where it rested on the railing. “Clint, you’re going to have to fix her memories.”

“ _What_?!” he gasped, horror in his voice. “I-I can’t do that! I’ll mess it up, do something worse than what’s already been done! No!”

He began to back away but stopped when Tony’s hand settled on his shoulder. “Yes,” he said, his voice gentle for once. “Yes, it has to be you. You knew her before the Soviet’s got their hands on her. You knew her a lot better than most people, I’d say.” He shrugged. “Banner’s right. You’re perfect.”

“But…” Clint’s voice cracked as he turned back to gaze at the still figure of Tatiana. She was pale, almost as white as the sheets she slept on and he could not get over how young she looked. It was almost as if…as if twenty-three years hadn’t happened. There were no lines bracketing her eyes, no gray twisting through her blonde hair. No sign that she had died in a broken bank building in Bosnia. No sign that she’d been the plaything for the Red Room for twenty-three years while he fought and fucked his way into his forties.

It wasn’t fair.

“What are you going to do to her?” he asked, his voice a faint growl as he turned back to his friends, memories of a snowy night suddenly coming to mind and he shivered at the memory of blood on his hands and knife flashing in the candlelight. “How are you going to do it?”

Bruce hesitated before glancing at Natasha; Clint’s lips twitched in a thin smile as she nodded minutely and he resisted rolling his eyes. “The chip, according to Natasha and JARVIS’s scans, is located at the base of the occipital knots in the back of her skull. It’s attached to the cerebellum. What we’re going to do is sedate her as best as possible, which in and of itself is going to be difficult seeing as how she metabolizes the pain medications so quickly, and then we’re going to…well…” he hesitated before sighing and rubbing his eyes wearily. Lowering his hands and seeing Clint’s frown he shrugged.

“There’s no easy way to put this,” he muttered before trailing of again.

Tony snorted and headed to the computers once more. “We have to plug her into the computer Barton,” he said, his voice as brusque and no-nonsense as ever. “The chip needs to be deprogrammed before we can remove it.”

Clint froze and his eyes flashed to Natasha, who smiled slightly. “I know Clint,” she said with a shrug. “But this time we know what we’re doing and she’s got you. It won’t be like…last time.”

Tony’s eyes flashed between them and he frowned. “Last time? What happened last time? Have you done this before Barton?”

He sighed and firmed his shoulders. “In a manner of speaking. Only it wasn’t quite the same situation. And I didn’t have JARVIS to help me out. Just a Bowie knife and snow.” Tony’s mouth fell open in shock and his gaze darted from one SHIELD agent to the other, but they didn’t say anything further. Clint smiled, a small part of him pleased at having shocked the great Tony Stark, but his humor was short lived. Glancing back at Tatiana he sighed, saying, “Right, let’s get this show on the road. The heart monitor is spiking again.”

“She’s gone through another dose of sedatives,” Bruce said, his voice frustrated as he grabbed another thing of morphine. “Between Natasha, Steve and now this girl we’re going to have to start buying in bulk.”

Clint froze in the process of unbuckling the restraints on Tatiana’s ankles and turned horrified eyes to Natasha, who flinched.

“She’s…she’s like you and Steve?” he ground out and she nodded. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Great. Just…great. How do I explain this to her?”

Natasha’s hand settled on his shoulder and she smiled as he glanced back at her, “Just get her back to the present Clint. Help level her out. Give her something to live for. The rest will take care of itself. It always does.”

He paused for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah. Sure,” he ground out as he helped Bruce flip her onto her back. “We still have to get the chip out of her and figure out what SHIELD’s been doing the past twenty-three years.”

“SHIELD?!” Stark snapped as he arrived at the side of the bed, a handful of wires in his hands. “What have they got to do with this?”

Natasha shook her head. “Everything or nothing, Stark. Let’s just get Tatiana figured out before we worry about Fury and his games.”

They were in the process of sweeping her hair off of her neck and into a surgical cap when she groaned; all four froze, their eyes widening as they gazed at the woman sprawled before them and Clint shivered as her eyes fluttered open.

Natasha, sensing her tension under her fingers, bent down so she was eye-level with Tatiana and smiled. “Hello Tatiana,” she said, in English. “Can you understand me?”

There was a sharp inhalation of breath, as Bruce inserted a syringe into the IV port, a quick flurry of words in Russian and Clint shivered at the harsh accent he’d hoped never to hear from Tatiana’s lips again.

It had been bad enough in the 80’s when she’d been rescued from Croatia and had been teased every day for her thick accent. This…this was just wrong.

There had been very little Tatiana Rashi had hated in the old days.

The Soviets were the one thing.

Natasha’s hand rose to stroke her hair out of her eyes and Tatiana shivered. “ _Skol'ko let, skol'ko zim_ , Kestrel,” she asked as the blonde’s eyes fluttered with the drugs suddenly swirling through her system. “ _Kak požyivaješ_?”

“ _Ya ne ponimaju_ ,” Tatiana whispered as she finally fell back to sleep and Natasha sighed, her shoulders slumping so that her head rested against the bed railings.

“Ah, I am sorry my sister,” she whispered. “ _Vyzdoravlivajte skoree moja sestry_.”

The men were quiet for a moment and then Bruce cleared his throat, making Clint and Natasha jump. He was holding a scalpel while Tony was fiddling with a cord about as thick as his thumb. Three prongs were attached to the end and the glittered ominously in the bright light of the infirmary. “It’s time. We have to do this quickly before the sedatives wear off.”

Then, before either agent could react he was slicing along a faint scar at the base of her skull and blood began to stream from the wound. Clint shivered, memories racking him but Natasha was there, her hand on his shoulder.

“Just sing to her Clint. Sing the songs you used to sing to her when she slept beside you. That’s all you have to do. We’ll take care of the rest.”

Her voice was gentle, even as Bruce revealed the tiny chip about the size of a thumbnail nestled against Tatiana’s spine and Tony quite simply plugged her into the Tower’s system.

Both agents flinched at the faint pop as the chip was connected and then JARVIS was saying, “Connection successful. Data extraction commencing in three-two-now.”

“This is it boys,” Tony said, his voice fierce as Bruce cauterized the edges of the wound he’d made in the process of revealing the chip. “Let’s get this party started.”

“When do I…when do you want me to start?” Clint asked, his mouth suddenly dry as he bent over Tatiana and studied her peaceful face.

“Not yet,” Bruce muttered. “JARVIS will let us know when the chip is at base level. Then you can begin.” His eyes were worried as he studied his friend. “She’s not going to have much left once we remove the chip. You’ll have to be very detailed and very careful Clint. Don’t mention anything about the Red Room or the Department. Just focus on what you know. And you might want to consider the story you’re going to use to explain twenty-three years of her sleeping.”

There was a beat and then Tony spoke up from his position behind a computer, “Coma. You could tell her she was in a coma. That’s not too bizarre.”

Clint nodded and he glanced at Natasha who smiled weakly from where she sat beside Bruce. “You’ll be fine Clint,” she said. “You’ve done this before. And this is Tatiana. It’s going to be fine.”

Her words did not soothe him.

But he didn’t have a chance to worry.

JARVIS’s voice was almost harsh, whether from the data sweeping through his systems or from the strain he’d been put under both from the extraction and from the heightened security measures Tony had put in place after Tatiana’s break-in, none of them knew, but when he said, “Data extraction complete, base achieved, commence wipe,” Tony nodded

“Now Clint,” Bruce said gently as he selected another syringe and slid that into the port. “You should hold her so she has an anchor.”

Seeing him hesitate, Natasha squeezed his hand and whispered once more, “Sing. Just sing for now. The rest will come.”

He nodded before gathering his courage and hauling himself into the bed beside Tatiana. “All right,” he said as he rested against the head of the bed and hauled her into his arms, being careful of IV and wires, “What do I do first?”

He was quiet for a moment and he briefly considered the _Lullaby_ but then decided against it. He’d save that for last, when they knew if they had been successful. If…

If she was back with him.

“Remember that first day we were in Tavnik, Tia?” he muttered as he nestled his cheek against her head; he smiled dreamily, his blue eyes softening at the feel of her in his arms. He continued after a moment, laughter in his voice, “And you’d gone out to find a scarf for your hair because we were going to go boating with that one diplomat and you left me sleeping in the hotel and I couldn’t find you so I decided I’d go to the piano down in the lobby and play until you got back? You came into the lobby and started laughing and it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.”

The infirmary was silent, the only sound the steady beep of the heart monitor at their side and the faint whir of the computer’s as they worked to process the data pumping through their servers. No one dared breathe, the tension was so high and none spoke.

Three pairs of eyes were watching the two agents on the hospital bed, but neither noticed.

Clint was far away, twenty-three years in the past, thinking of warm sunlight on the ivory keys of a Hungarian grand piano and her soft laughter as she wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering in his ear, _You put Billy Joel to shame Clinton_.

“I’m going to sing that song to you, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Hope you don’t mind. You always said it was one of your favorites.”

He sang then, his voice far rougher than it had been in that beautiful Bosnian hotel they’d stayed in over two decades ago.

But it was still his voice.

And she could still hear him.

“ _Some folks like to get away_ ” he sang, a soft chuckle in his voice as he caught Natasha’s eye-roll. “ _Take a holiday from the neighborhood, hop a flight to Miami Beach, or to Hollywood. But I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River Line. I'm in a New York state of mind…_ ”

It took him far too long to notice her fingers tightening in his shirt, or her body pressing itself more firmly against his chest.

But as he was starting into the chorus he did notice her head tilting under his chin and her lips pressing against his throat.

And he did notice her voice whispering the first line of the chorus and that’s when he felt his world suddenly lurch back to the present.

“ _It comes down to reality_ ,” she sang with him, her voice just a whisper, but still there. Her eyes were closed and according to the computers, her mind was still in free-form. But somehow…somehow she knew what he was singing.

“ _And it's fine with me 'cause I've let it slide_ ,” they continued, his eyes wide as he met Natasha’s gaze from across the infirmary. She was smiling, a sad little smile that he did not understand and she nodded. He shrugged and nodded as well before turning back to Tatiana, who was still and warm in his arms, if not entirely there. “ _Don't care if it's Chinatown or on Riverside. I don't have any reasons. I've left them all behind. I'm in a New York state of mind._ ”

As the song finished she shuddered in his arms and her fingers pressed against his chest. He frowned, cocking his head so he could look at her face and that’s when her eyes opened.

His own widened at the blank quality there but before he could panic, Bruce was at their side, flashing a penlight in her eyes. “It’s just her neurologic patterns realigning Clint,” he said, his voice relieved as her pupils contracted and dilated in response to the light. She’s still reprogramming. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

“But,” he sputtered as Bruce started to move away, “she was singing!”

Bruce smiled and nodded. “Yeah, she was,” he said gently. “That’s a good thing. She’s starting to remember. But you have to do more than that. Keep singing the songs you used to sing to her and telling her stories. The rest will happen as it happens.”

Natasha was at his side then and she squeezed his hand where it rested against Tatiana’s waist. “The _Lullaby_ Clint, you should sing that to her. It will help, believe me. She never forgot that.”

He swallowed nervously, suddenly terrified at the thought of singing that song to her again, and he couldn’t help thinking of that last day, when all hell had broken loose and he’d lost her.

She’d laid in his lap, her dress pooled in his lap and her blood coated his fingers, even as their enemies searched for them and her heart slowed. And he’d sung to her.

The lullaby that would forever remind him of Tatiana Rashi.

“I love you Tia,” he whispered. “Please remember that I love you. You were always the bravest of us, even when you stood up to that general. You were the one that made me strong. I’m sorry, so sorry I left you.”

And then, before he could lose his calm, he sang her Billy Joel's _Lullaby_.

And that’s when Tatiana’s equilibrium was restored.

For the first time in twenty-three years she wasn’t broken.

For the first time in twenty-three years…

She was safe.

In _his_ arms.

“Clint,” she whispered as he crooned, “ _Goodnight my angel, now it’s time to dream_ …”

“Clint, please don’t leave me…”

And his arms wrapped around her and his lips pressed against hers and he whispered as her eyes locked on his, “Never, Tia. I will never leave you again.”

Finally, her mind found peace.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Goodnight my angel…”

His harsh laughter was the last thing she heard as she finally fell asleep and in the distance she heard a cool British voice saying, “Reprogramming complete. Factory settings have been achieved. The device may be removed and…”

Tatiana Rashi was finally back in the present.

And there was absolutely no sign of Agent 0, call sign Kestrel, in her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am completely shameless, I know. 
> 
> So this story is rife with headcanon's of mine, mostly because of Fraction's current run on the Hawkguy but also because of tumblr. So first of all, I just love the thought of Clint singing Bill Joel songs; in all of my stories he does to a certain extent, even to the point of singing the Lullaby, which is actually my favorite BJ song of all time, to the Hulk to keep him calm. 
> 
> But I think the most shameless thing I have done is having him sing "New York State of Mind." For those of you who don't know, Jeremy Renner sang the song with Jimmy Fallon this summer and it was mind-blowingly awesome and I have never been able to stop thinking of Clint singing while on missions or to his partners. 
> 
> If you want a link (I couldn't find the Fallon one, it's on my tumblr somewhere but I DID find this one which is better) here it is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdweUb6nNqk
> 
> and welcome to my headcanon. 
> 
> One more chapter to go. 
> 
> Love to all. 
> 
> -M


	5. Part of Me

**Three Days Later**   
**Hawkeye’s Quarters**

Clint opened his eyes sometime around dawn on the third morning since Tatiana’s arrival at the Tower to see her sitting before the bedroom windows in nothing but the shirt he’d shed the night before when he’d crawled into bed beside her.

Her blonde hair streamed down her back like molten gold, catching and reflecting the warm sunlight which silhouetted her slender figure and he shivered at the memories of his fingers tangling in those strands.

She was stunning.

So, so stunning.

And alive…

“Tia,” he called from his nest of pillows and blankets; he frowned when she didn’t respond and sat up quickly. “Tia? You okay baby?”

That’s when he heard her…singing.

“I’m in a New York state of mind…” she hummed as she tilted her face towards the sun and rested back on her palms.

He froze in the process of detangling himself from the covers and chuckled softly as she glanced at him over her shoulder and smiled.

“Hi,” she said, her voice soft, dreamy. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Clint chuckled wryly and finally succeeded in removing himself from the sheet which had somehow managed to wrap itself around his hips. “You didn’t wake me, Tia,” he said as he slid off the bed. “Whatcha doing?” he asked, before settling behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. “Why’re you up so early?”

“I wanted to see the sun on the Chrysler again,” she murmured as she rested against his chest and ran her hands over his legs. “I never thought I’d see that after Bosnia…”

“Oh,” he said, simply. He rested his chin on her shoulder, nestling his cheek against her ear and hummed softly. “Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood…” he half-sang.

She hummed along, a small smile on her lips, her hand rising to stroke his stubbled cheek, as he rocked her gently in his arms. Her eyes drifted closed as he hummed, his voice warm in her ear and she almost missed him whispering, “We should take a holiday. What do you think Tia? Think we can do that?”

“A holiday?” she asked, half-surprised, and only a bit concerned, “Why?!”

He chuckled again and craned around her so he could meet her still sleepy gaze. “It’s not as bad as all that kiddo,” he said with a cheeky grin. “It’d do you good. And it’d give us a chance to…well…get away from the City for a while. Really take a break from this, from Banner’s poking and Fury’s eyeballing. Yeah? What’s wrong?”

She was quiet for a moment, her fingers running soft patterns over his forearms, making him shiver, from her touch and her silence. “I dream Clint,” she finally whispered. “Fury doesn’t know that. It feels…wrong…telling him about the dreams.”

He had stiffened against her at the mention of dreams and her lips twitched into a bitter smile. “Have you told Bruce about this?” he asked, his voice calm, despite the thrumming of his heart against her back and the tightening of his arms around her. “You can’t keep that to yourself Tatiana…”

She sighed and pressed herself tighter against his back, her eyes raised to the clear blue sky above them and nodded. “Yes, Dr. Banner knows about the dreams. He was the one who noticed them first, actually.”

Clint frowned and turned her gently so he could see her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” he asked, his voice soft but his gaze cold.

She was not fazed by his irritation though. She simply patted his cheek and leaned forward to press a kiss to his lips. “I just did, Clint,” she whispered. “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine. Dr. Banner says it’s just residual effects of the coma. Where do you want to go for this holiday?” she continued as she pulled herself to her knees and rested her arms across his shoulders. “Florida?”

He heard the laughter in her voice but he did not miss the shadows in her gaze or the paleness of her cheeks. But he did not push her. If there was one thing that had not changed about Tatiana Rashi, it was her stubborn streak of pride.

She’d never willingly tell him about her dreams.

Not when she was ready for him to ask her.

He chuckled and ran his callused fingers over her arms to wrap around the back of her neck. “Not Florida,” he muttered as he ran his thumbs over the bandage covering the healing wound at the back of her skull. The chip was gone, but he still shivered at the feel of the adhesive stuck to her skin. Raising his eyes back to hers, he grinned. “Everyone in the world is in Florida. Stark actually suggested his house in the Hamptons. Even gave us the lease in case the locals get nosy. Want to?” he asked, his eyebrows rising as she giggled.

“The Hamptons?!” she asked, shocked. “Really?! But it’s November!”

He shrugged with a grin and pulled her in for a kiss, which only made her laugh harder, and he growled as his lips roamed along her jaw to nibble at the hollow beneath her ear, “The Hamptons at winter won’t be that bad. His cottage is winterized. And we won’t have to fight the richy-riches for lobster.”

She was breathless, limp in his arms and as he pulled away so he could watch the emotions play on her face she gasped, “I do love lobster.”

He smiled, the expression wry. “I know you do,” he said as he pulled her into his arms and made to rise. “So? It’s a deal? We’re getting out of the City, just you and me?”

Her fingers brushed over his lips and she nodded. “You and me and lobster. That sounds perfect.”

“Yeah,” he muttered as he carried her towards his bed. “Yeah, it really does, doesn’t it?”

She hummed against his lips as he set her against the pillows and began to kiss her good morning.

The warm sunlight streamed down on them as they twisted each other into the sheets and soon he was singing against her warm, velvety skin that smelled of vanilla and sunshine and her own special musk he had only smelled in his dreams for the past twenty three years.

 _“I promised I would never leave you_ ,” he crooned as his fingers tangled in her hair and her hands ran over the solid muscles in his back, back-and-forth. “ _And you should always know, wherever you may go…_ ”

She smiled dreamily when his lips rested at her collarbones and whispered back, her hips pressing into his as she cradled the back of his head in her hands, “ _No matter where you are, I never will be far away_ …Please Clint…”

“Yes, my angel,” he said, his voice husky as he pulled her into the safe harbor of his arms. “For you…yes.”

Her sigh as he kissed her was the only lullaby he would ever need…

For the rest of his days.

**

“What has she been dreaming about Banner?”

Clint’s voice was sharp in Bruce Banner’s lab and he jumped from his hunched position over a microscope to stare wild eyed at the archer leaning in the doorway.

“Wh-what? Who’s dreaming, Clint?” he asked distractedly, his body already yearning towards the microscope and the petri dish he’d been studying before the interruption now moving slowly in his direction.

“Tatiana,” Clint growled as he stalked towards the scientist he counted as a personal friend. “She’s been dreaming and neither of you saw fit to tell me?”

Neither man noticed at first Clint’s fist tangling into the doctor’s purple shirt but they did hear the ominous growl that slipped the man’s lips.

Bruce’s eyes were wide as his eyes rose to meet Clint’s, who quickly released him and backed away. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “That was my bad. Easy big guy, I didn’t mean it.”

Bruce took a deep breath and ran his hands through his tousled curls. “It’s fine Clint,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m fine. Just…give me a second.”

Clint moved around the desk carefully, his eyes locked on Bruce’s hunched form, and sat slowly even as the other man took another deep breath and rolled his shoulders.

“I’m fine,” he repeated with a wry smile. “Sorry, you just took me by surprise.”

Both men stared at each other for a moment, each testing the other and then Clint smirked. “Sorry about that man,” he said as he sagged into his chair. “Kind of got caught up in the heat of the moment I guess. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Bruce waved the other man’s worries away and turned back to his microscope. “So you’re concerned about Tatiana’s dreams?” he asked as he pushed his glasses up on his forehead before lowering his face to the oculus of the scope. Clint nodded and Bruce smiled. “Why, may I ask?”

Clint hesitated, his fingers fiddling with the zipper of the leather jacket he wore and after a moment of this awkward silence sighed. “She just mentioned it to me this morning. I just…I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. That she wasn’t having…flashbacks, I guess, of the Department.”

Bruce straightened at the worry in his friend’s voice and hurried to reassure him, saying, “No, no. They were really quite normal as far as I could determine. At least…” He sighed again and ran his hand distractedly through his curl. “At least she didn’t seem unduly upset by them Clint.”

Seeing the questions in his eyes, Bruce squeezed Clint’s shoulder and muttered, “Look, you should ask her about them. It’s not my place to tell you what she’s been experiencing. You should go to her and ask. It won’t hurt.”

Clint continued to hesitate but as Bruce nudged him towards the lab’s door he asked, “But what was she dreaming about? What would she dream about after that hell they put her through if not the Red Room and the Department? What…”

Bruce sighed again and leaned heavily on his worktable, his eyes shadowed as he studied the archer.

Then his lips lifted in a small smile and he waved his hand. “She’s been dreaming about you Clint,” he finally said, his voice gentle. “That’s all. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the same kinds of dreams she’s been having for the past twenty-three years.”

Clint’s eyes were wide, his mouth agape, as he stared at the scientist before him.

But before he could ask any more questions, his phone began to vibrate in his pocket and Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire issued from the speakers. Bruce chuckled, waved his hand once more and finally returned to his microscope while Clint answered the phone.

“Hey Clint’s phone. Hi beautiful! Yeah, I’m coming up to grab the bags and you. Be there in a sec. Love you too Tia. Bye.”

Bruce glanced up at the sound of the door opening and his eyebrows rose at the sight of Clint hesitating in the doorway. “Clint,” he started to say but the archer stopped him. “Look Doc,” he said, his voice rough with barely controlled emotion. “Just… thanks…for all of your help. It…It means a lot. To both of us. So…thanks.”

“Any time,” Bruce said, his voice gentle. “Have fun in the Hamptons.”

Clint’s smile was warm and heartfelt and laughter had replaced some of the dark emotion he’d felt, standing in this stark lab. “Look Banner,” he said, still hesitating in the doorway. “I hope I can return the favor, at some point. If you need anything-anything at all man-Tia and I will always lend a hand, I hope you know that.”

Bruce’s lips twitched in a smile and he nodded. “Thanks Clint,” he muttered. “That… that means a lot.”

“Yeah…well, catch you on the flip-side Banner. If you need anything, let me know. And if Fury doesn’t have us out at Christmas you should totally stop by for a bit. It’d be great. Just…think on it, man.” Clint shrugged and zipped up his jacket. “Right,” he muttered with a slightly sheepish grin. “Gotta get out of here. The lady’s going to come hunting for me soon. See you later Bruce.”

And then he was gone.

Bruce chuckled and shook his head, muttering as the door finally closed behind their archer, “See you later Barton.”

He hummed to himself absentmindedly for a moment and then froze in the process of sliding another petri dish under the scope. “God Barton,” he sighed, his lips lifted in a wry smile.

He’d been singing Barton’s Lullaby.

That had become a common occurrence for the entire team whenever the archer was around.

He supposed it was going to become even more common now that Tatiana was around.

They all knew who Barton had been singing that song for, for the past twenty-some years.

“Remember all the songs you sang for me,” he hummed absently, the small smile still in place as he studied the new petri dish. “When we went sailing on an emerald bay…”

That other half of him, the twisted, dark half of himself that he still regarded as a dubious gift, hummed along and together they kept each other company.

Which would never change.

No matter what happened.

“Goodnight my angel,” he murmured and only that other part of him heard.

**

**Maria’s Cove**   
**Southhampton, New York**   
**Midnight, November 23, 2012**

“Oh Clint, it’s beautiful,” Tatiana murmured sleepily, her breath warm on his cheek.

His arms tightened around her as he negotiated the many stone steps leading to the darkened beach house and he chuckled. “You can’t even see it yet, super-spy,” he grumbled breathlessly.

She was by no means heavy, but considering the blankets she was wrapped in and the heavy winter clothes she had worn for the trip…

“God, you’re a load Tia,” he muttered as he finally reached the wide, wrap-around porch of the Stark beach house.

She chuckled and planted a kiss on his jaw. “You’ve gotten soft Hawkeye,” she said cheekily. “What have you been doing all of these years? Eating doughnuts?”

He snorted as he finally set her down. “I wish,” he muttered, his arm still wrapped around her waist, while he dug in his pocket for the key Stark had given them before they left.

Finally he found it and with a triumphant, “Ta-dah!” he handed it over to her. “Here, baby,” he said as he pulled her, blankets and all into his arms and towards the door. “Merry Christmas.”

“It’s not Christmas yet Clint,” she said but he kissed her, stilling her words. “Just open the damn door woman,” he growled. “It’s fucking cold out here and I want to see our new digs.”

She laughed and nodded. “All right, but only if you promise to let us sleep in front of the stove. Pepper told me it’s massive and heats the whole house.” She smiled as she slid the key home in the deadbolt. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she whispered as she turned it slowly.

The click of the bolt sliding free was loud on the screened in porch and she shivered as his solid arms reached around her to open the door.

“I promise,” he whispered against her ear. “For you, I’d sleep on the goddamn dock.”

“Don’t give me any ideas,” she whispered back as she stepped over the threshold into their Christmas present from Tony Stark.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, her eyes wide as she took in the stunning entryway of the beach house. “This is…wow.”

“Damn,” Clint muttered. “Trust Stark to do everything top-knotch. Wonder how much this cost him.”

She only shook her head. “And he gave us this place?” she asked, wonder in her voice as she ran her hands over the silken dark wood banisters curving up into the upper-story shadows. “Why?”

Clint shrugged and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Because he’s Tony Stark,” he muttered in her ear. He kicked the door closed and nipped gently at her earlobe, making her giggle. “I’ll never understand him.”

She turned in his arms, looping her arms around his neck, pressing herself against his chest and she kissed him deeply.

“Thank you Clint,” she whispered when they finally broke apart. “For everything.”

He chuckled and kissed the tip of her nose. “Hey, anything for you sweetheart. Tell you what,” he continued as he led her to the kitchen. “You do some exploring, I’ll get the rest of our stuff. Tony said he had his caretaker stock the place so let’s see what we’ve got, all right?”

She nodded as the lights came on in the massive kitchen and he kissed her once more before heading out into the gloom.

When he finally burst through the door, half an hour later, his arms loaded up with more suitcases and bags than he had thought they’d actually brought, he froze in the doorway.

“Want to close the door Hawkeye? You’re letting out all of the heat.”

His mouth snapped closed as the bags fell to the floor with a thud and the door snapped closed behind him.

“Tia!” he sputtered, his eyes wide as she chuckled. “Wh-what are you wearing?”

She glanced down at herself, where she lay before the fire she’d started in the steel bellied stove and chuckled.

“This?” she asked as she plucked the delicate black lace lingerie she’d put on for the night. “Oh it’s nothing Clint, just my pajamas. Would you like to take a closer look?”

He shivered at the soft purr in her voice and took a step into the firelit living room, shedding his jacket as he went. “I would love to take a closer look,” he growled as his boots came off next and then his shirt.

When he fell down beside her in the nest of blankets she had arranged before the stove all he wore were his jeans, tented now at the sight of her lounging before him, nibbling on the grapes she had found in the fridge.

“Tia,” he groaned as her fingers trailed over his heated flesh, plucking gently at his nipples and stroking so gently over the scars curving around his ribs and the puckered scar in his shoulder where Natasha had shot him that first time. When her hands settled at the button of his jeans and her fingers rubbed confidently against the heated bulge of his cock he groaned. “Are you sure?”

She didn’t answer right away; instead she sat up before him and wrapped her arms around his neck to tangle in his hair.

“Oh yes, I am always sure with you,” she murmured, her eyes sparkling in the firelight washing over them as she unzipped his pants and began to ease them over his hips. Her fingers trailed along the bones, teasing with nails and callused pads and he almost lost it right then. She laughed softly and pressed a kiss to his neck, where she whispered against his skin, her teeth nipping against the muscles tensing there, “Now love me, you stupid archer.”

He hesitated for the barest moment but as her knee slid between his and her hips rolled against his thigh he chuckled and tumbled her backwards.

“Your wish is my command, Tatiana Rashi,” he whispered as he feathered kisses from her lips down to her breasts. She writhed beneath his wandering hands, whimpering as he sucked her nipples one-by-one through the coarse lace of her bodice. He glanced at her, a wicked grin on his lips as his teeth tugged and his tongue laved the now pebbled flesh and she closed her eyes with a sigh.

Every line in her body tensed at his touch and he shivered as her skin flushed under the opaque lace.

He untied the slinky ribbon between her breasts, revealing the soft globes to the heated air and she groaned as his fingers rolled and massaged the soft flesh. His mouth never left her skin and his eyes fluttered closed as he inhaled her musky scent.

The black lace was puddled around her shoulders and not for the first time he hesitated at the faint scars marring her flat belly. Absently he thought the Russians had done an amazing job healing her.

It was almost eerie…

He pressed a tender kiss to each scar, murmuring her name as he did so, his voice husky and reverent.

“Tatiana I love you,” he whispered as he propped himself over her to kiss her once more. “I love you.”

Her eyes were vague, dark with desire and her hand shook as she stroked his cheek. “I love you too miljenik.”

He rested his forehead against her temple and ran his hand firmly over her flanks, squeezing her breasts gently as he passed each one. Her breath was short, rapid pants as his knee pressed between her legs to push so very gently against her center. Her eyelids fluttered at the fraction of the jeans he still wore and he smiled against her jaw, nipping tenderly at the hollow beneath her ear.

“Are you ready?” he whispered and she nodded, her eyes opening at last and he nearly drowned in their depths. But he couldn’t lose himself yet. He couldn’t.

He pulled away from her at last and once more traveled down the length of her sprawled figure, his mouth sucking and biting, his tongue laving and always she shivered against him and her scent overwhelmed him.  
He had missed this. For twenty-three years he had fucked his way around the world but never been satisfied.

It was because of her.

Because of Tatiana Rashi. His ghostly lover.

“Ah Tia,” he whispered as hot desire, barely controlled, threatened to overwhelm him. “I love you.”

“Clint, please,” she whispered to the ceiling as he spread her legs and began to nip so very gently at the delicate skin of her inner thighs. “Please, please…”

He glanced at her, a mischievous light in his eyes as he noted the slightly glassy quality of her eyes and the high flush in her cheeks and he chuckled as one finger began to run teasingly along her delicate folds.

“This is what you want?” he questioned as her hips bucked into his touch. He did not give her what she wanted, not right away, simply teased and teased.

She groaned and her hands knotted into the blankets as he kissed her, his tongue darting in to taste her salty musk. Her legs trembled as his callused fingers ran up her calves and his tongue swirled delicately around her clit.

“Oh god,” she whispered, her back arching into his touch. “O Bože, o Bože,” she moaned as he brought her to the edge with fingers and tongue.

It was a sentiment he found himself agreeing with.

Just as she felt herself begin to tip over that dark edge he left her; she sagged to the blankets with a soft cry and her fingers clenched in frustration as she gazed at where he stood over her, easing out of his jeans and boxers.

He chuckled at the sight of her tongue darting out to moisten her lips and the desire had been replaced with hunger in her gaze. When his pants lay abandoned and his cock stood to attention in the warm air of Stark’s beach house, she groaned and her back arched, her fingers trailing over her heated skin to press against her folds.

“Dragi Bože pomozi mi, pomozi mi,” she prayed in Serbian, her eyes fluttering closed as he eased himself down between her legs. His hands ran gently over her legs, gripping her calves just enough so he could pull her towards where he knelt. He pushed her hands aside, lifting them to his lips so he could suck her taste from their tips and she very nearly went over at the soft touch of his tongue wrapping around each digit.

“Please Clint,” she groaned, her voice harsh now and he couldn’t wait any longer.

“All right,” he whispered as his tip pressed against her outer folds and he gritted his teeth as her hips rocked forward, seeking to push him deeper into her center. “Easy sweetheart, take your time,” he whispered as he pushed himself further; her back arched as he lowered himself slowly over her waist and she gasped when his hips rolled into a slow thrust.

“Easy,” he whispered against her ear. “Easy. We have all the time in the world for this. We have each other for forever now. Easy, easy…”

And somehow…somehow as their bodies fit together as they hadn’t done for over two decades, she knew he was right.

She was in his arms once more.

She was safe.

And though her dreams were confusing and concerning at times, nothing could compare to having him once more in her arms.

Nothing could compare to the feel of the fire on their rocking bodies.

Nothing could compare…

To being alive.

“I love you Clint,” she whispered against his shoulder as they each reached their climax. “I love you…”

And when he slumped against her, his skin shuddering with the aftermath and his breath ragged against her neck, he sang to her.

And that’s when she knew he truly did love her.

And he would never lose her again.

_Goodnight, my angel_   
_Now it's time to sleep_   
_And still so many things I want to say_   
_Remember all the songs you sang for me_   
_When we went sailing on an emerald bay_   
_And like a boat out on the ocean_   
_I'm rocking you to sleep_   
_The water's dark_   
_And deep inside this ancient heart_   
_You'll always be a part of me…_


	6. Out of the Shadows

**SHIELD Helicarrier**

**The Bridge**

**  
**"Director Fury, may I have a word?"

Fury turned at Natasha Romanov's cold voice and tried to summon a smile.  Seeing the furious glint in her eyes and the tense way she held herself though, he ultimately failed.  

"I don't think my saying 'no' is going to stop you agent," he said mildly.  She didn't bat an eye.  Instead, she tensed further, her legs sliding into a defensive position, as if she were prepariing for a blow.  He sighed.  "Go ahead Natasha," he said with a wave of his hand.  "Spit it out.  What's wrong?"

Her eyes narrowed and she glanced around the quiet bridge; there were only a few SHIELD personnel about, it was a quiet night for once and he'd sent most of the agents to bed.  It was just him, Hill and one or two trusted agents.  None were paying attention to the Director and his companion though and she sighed.  

"What are you doing with Tatiana Rashi?" she snapped finally, her green eyes blazing as she took a slow step forward towards where he stood near the windows overlooking the sea they currently hung over.  "How did you know about her coming to the Tower last week?"

Fury was quiet for a moment.  He turned back to the windows and folded his hands behind his back.  For a long moment he watched the water writhe beneath them and wondered what answer he should give his best agent.  He wondered if she would believe his telling the truth.

Probably not. 

His lips twitched in a wry smile and he sighed once more.  "It's a long story agent," he began, his voice a low growl she had to move forward to hear.  He could see the frown on her brow, the faint crinkle of her brows as she cocked her head in his direction and his smile grew.  "Tatiana Rashi was one of our best agents.  She was from Serbia, a refugee of the war, but that wasn't what made her the best.  She spoke every dialect of the Soviet Empire, she was intelligent and she was capable of compassion.  It was the right mix for the time period."  He shrugged.  "We sent her and Clint to Bosnia, on a hopeless mission, in hopes of maybe putting an end to the war between the Serbians and Bosnians but we did not count on the Soviet's catching wind of our plan.  Clint and Tatiana were ambushed and we lost her and almost him.  It was a fuck show from the very beginning.  The handlers were corrupt, the safe houses were bombed and in the end she took six bullets trying to keep Clint and her target safe.  We, as well as Clint, thought she'd died there in Bosnia.  She hadn't."  

He rubbed his forehead for a moment and then shook his head.  "You remember what it was like during the Cold War Natasha," he muttered, still not meeting her cold gaze.  "We never expected to see her again but we should have known.  Should have known the Russian's wouldn't let somethig like a SHIELD agent rest easy.  Somehow they got her and somehow they revived her.  You know that, you were there."

She nodded.  "But what was  _SHIELD's_ interest in her?  How did you know she was going to be at the Tower?"  He could hear the frustration in her voice and he sighed. 

Then he finally turned to her, his one eye shadowed, "We found her on a mission in Russia. She'd been in the cryotank for nearly fifteen years, frozen in time, never realizing the war had ended, never realizing her compatriots were dead or captured.  She and one other had been kept on ice for so long we almost feared they wouldn't survive the thaw.  But when she emerged, as damaged as she had been when the Soviet's froze her the last time, we knew we had to get her to someone who may be able to reinstate her memories."  

Natasha's eyes were wide.  "Clint," she breathed and he nodded.  "Yeah.  Barton knew her better than any of us.  Knew her better than she knew herself at the time.  If anyone could get her back to normal..." he shrugged.  "It was the damn Lullaby that made us realize," he grumbled, turning back to the window.  "She wouldn't stop singing it and even though she was a 'Russian' spy they couldn't erase all of her humanity.  It apparently drove the Soviet's crazy.  She was a wildcard, completely unstable.  They were never quite sure if she would turn on her handlers or her targets.  And always she sang that song.  Clint would sing it to her on missions, to keep her calm, to make her feel safe."   _  
_

She didn't ask how the Director knew that.

Sometimes it was best not to ask.

"So," she said slowly as she sagged into one of the chairs behind a computer.  "You brought her Stateside, melted her down, programmed her with Soviet tech and then gave her a shoddy mission, all in hope that Stark and Clint would be able to get her back to normal.  Why didn't you try to do it here?"

Fury shrugged.  "I took my chances on Barton.  I thought that if anyone could reset her programming it would be him.  She was singing his song and she was remembering in bits and pieces who he was, who she was.  According to her superiors she was so unstable they almost neutralized her.  But two of their top agents stopped them and persuaded them to just put her to sleep for a while in hopes that the ice would fix her."

His dark eye settled on her and she shivered as half-forgotten memories washed through her mind.

"Oh," she whispered and she tried to ignore the faint tremble of her fingers.  "That's...uh..."  She shook herself and forced her mind back to the present.  "What do you mean to do with her now?" she snapped, her voice once more cool and collected.

Fury could see the trepidation in her eyes though, the uncertainty. 

For a brief moment he regretted forcing her memories back onto her.  But sometimes things had to be done the difficult way.

He shrugged. 

"For the time being we'll leave her be.  Let her get adjusted to the present, make sure she is truly stabilized and then ultimately, we'll leave the decision as to what she wants to do up to her and Barton.  If anyone deserves early retirement, I believe it is Agent Rashi."  He glanced at her and smiled.  "Is that fair Agent Romanov?" he asked, dark humor in his voice.

She hesitated for a moment and then nodded.  "Yes," she said, rising from her chair.  "Yes I think that is fair.  It will be good for her...and for Clint.  Thank you Director."  

He nodded.  "Yes, well, I figured I owed you an explanation," he mused as he turned back to the windows.  "Don't think it'll happen again." 

She chuckled and began heading towards the main floor of the carrier.  Before she had gone too far though, she froze as something he had said struck her.  "Director," she said slowly as she turned back to him.  He didn't look at her but she could see his eye staring at her reflection.  "You said you found one other with Tatiana."  She swallowed and her fingers clenched nervously as she fought to control her nerves.  "Who else was in the Red Room?"

He didn't answer.  

Instead his gaze drifted to something over her shoulder and she jumped as someone shadowy moved behind her.  

"Hello Natasha," said a softly accented voice from out of her shadowy past and she felt her knees buckle in response.  He caught her easily, the metal of his arm cold against her hips and she shivered as he bent his head over her, his gray eyes sparkling in the bright light of the bridge.  His hair was shorter than she remembered but his face was as young as it had been during the decades they had worked for the Red Room.  

It was him.

However impossible.

Her very own ghost had emerged from her past. 

Was this what it had been like for Clint when Tatiana had snuck into his apartment?

She felt like she was emerging from a fevered nightmare to stare once more upon the sun.  

She felt  _alive_.

"Winter Soldier," she whispered in shock, her fingers rising to stroke his cheek as he smiled down upon her, "Oh my God."

He smiled in response and bent to press a kiss to her lips. 

And then he muttered, " _Zdravstvuy moy dorogaya Chernaya Vdovy. Ya skuchal po tebe_."

_Hello my darling Black Widow.  I have missed you._

She realized then that Fury had been playing them once more.  

But she couldn't bring herself to hate him entirely for this latest game.  

" _Ya znal, chto naydu tebya_ ," she whispered as she tangled her fingers in his hair and kissed him.  

 _I knew I would find you_... 

 

 


End file.
